"Even within the benighted UN Human Rights Council, today was a dark day for human rights," said Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch.
Neuer was responding to the March 26 consensus appointment of Richard Falk as the Councils new (and rather grandly named) "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. In that role, Falk will be tasked with investigating Israeli military actions for the next six years.
Richard Falks name is familiar to longtime UN watchers. The professor emeritus of International Law and Policy at Princeton University has a long history of unapologetic anti-American, anti-Israeli views.
Yitzhak Levanon, Israels ambassador to the United Nations, responded to Falks appointment by recalling some of the professors most notorious writings, including his unapologetic use of the word holocaust to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel.
The charge is well founded. In a July 2007 article titled Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust, Falk rhetorically asked whether it was an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? Falks revealing answer: I think not. Demonstrating that he was incapable of evaluating Israeli policy with balance as his new UN post would seem to require Falk proceeded to condemn Israeli policies as a holocaust-in-the-making and deplored what he called the genocidal tendencies of the Jewish state.
This was clearly a singularly inappropriate choice for this position, commented Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Falks startling record of anti-Israel prejudice should have been enough to preclude him from a position where an unbiased observer is needed to report on the status of human rights in the territories.
Who is Richard Falk? The author of more than twenty books, Falk is a prominent member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which the CIA once characterized as one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party. Today Falk chairs the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, whose recommended strategy for combating terrorism is to increase U.S. aid to those countries that act as a breeding ground for terrorists.
Falk has a long record of opposing U.S. foreign policy going back to 1979, when he expressed support for the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he called the liberator of Iran. In a rose-colored op-ed for the New York Times that year -- only months before 52 American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran -- Falk wrote that the depiction of [Ayatollah Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.
Falk has emerged as an outspoken opponent to the "War on Terror" and the invasion of Iraq. He insists that the root cause of radical Islamic terrorism is that the mass of humanity... finds itself under the heels of U.S. economic, military, cultural, and diplomatic power. It is a revealing commentary on the United Nations that someone who considers jihadists to be the victims of American foreign policy will now be in charge of investigating Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas.
Indeed, Falk clearly considers the United States a bigger threat to international security than Islamic terrorists. Falk frequently has used the term fascist to describe the Bush administration and the Patriot Act. In 2003, he condemned what he saw as the uncritical and chauvinistic patriotism that swept across America after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Without being paranoid, this is the sort of mentality that is capable of fabricating a Reichstag fire as a pretext, so as to achieve more and more control by the state over supposed islands of resistance.
That Reichstag fire trope is a favorite among 9/11 conspiracy theorists. So it comes as no surprise that Falk is also connected to the dubious Truther movement that accuses the Bush administration of secretly staging the attacks in New York and Washington as a pretext for launching the war in Iraq.
David Ray Griffins 9/11 conspiracy theory book, The New Pearl Harbor, boasts a breathless foreword by professor Falk, who had lobbied his publishers to accept the manuscript. The foreword once again reveals Falks loathing of patriotism, and his paranoid notions of a fascist America run by a not-so-secret neo-conservative (read: Jewish) cabal:
"...there are troubling forces at work that block our access to the truth about 9/11. Ever since 9/11 the mainstream media has worked hand-in-glove with the government in orchestrating a mood of patriotic fervor making any expressions of doubts about the official leadership of the country appear to be conclusive evidence of disloyalty."
In March of this year, Richard Falk told one representative of the Truther movement that it is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people.
Were Falk simply an obscure crank, his views about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 could be written off as the rantings of a sadly delusional individual. However, Falks enthusiasm for conspiracy theories casts grave doubts about the levels of objectivity and competence he will bring to his new investigative position at the United Nations. Unlike the scientific method or other rational methods of deduction, conspiracy theories work backwards from frequently tenuous evidence, in order to prove the conspiracists pre-determined theories.
Richard Falk publicly has sided with radical Islam over America and Israel for three decades, with little consideration for facts and evidence. Given that, and his gullible support for bizarre 9/11 revelations, critics have good reason to suspect that, as a UN investigator, Falk will leave a great deal to be desired.
Adding insult to injury was the same-day appointment of another opponent of Israel to the same UN Human Rights Council. Jean Ziegler, co-founder of the Muammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize named for the Libyan dictator whose own human rights record has been rated among The Worst of the Worst by Freedom House was voted onto the Council by an overwhelming majority, as an expert advisor representing the Western world. Like Falk, Ziegler has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and is an admirer of dictators, including Ethiopias Colonel Mengistu and his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe. Ziegler also publicly defends Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy as one of the leading thinkers of our time.
Since only three Human Rights Council seats are allotted to Western nations, the appointments of Richard Falk and Jean Ziegler dash any hopes of seeing a more balanced Council in the immediate future. And they confirm, yet again, that if the United Nations ever could stake a claim to moral legitimacy, those days are long gone.
#1
Since everyone else believes in linkage for everything under the sun, how about...
Israel relocates the Palestinian refugees to the Golan Heights area (and the Shaba Farms for that matter). Syria can have area back only if they accept these Palestinians as citizens with no claim to territory in Israel, West Bank or Gaza Strip.
Should have done it with Sinai, this is their last chance.
Of course Syria would agree expecting to backtrack. The Pals would probably refuse to agree because they want to be thorns in Israel's side. Both could be decried as foot draggers in the piece process.
#1
this is the reason why wikipedia will never be taken seriously. eventually someone will start a wiki that values science and truth and then Wikipedia will be forgotten.
#2
As an atmospheric scientist, and as I have said many times...in 10 years the global warming Nazis will be thrown out on their collective ears. PDO and variations in the solar constant can account for 95% of the "warming" we have observed. In fact, the Russians have been advertising for several years now that we are headed toward a inter-century sunspot minima that could push us into another "mini-iceage" like the so-called Little Ice Age the Northern Hemisphere experienced from 1300s to the late 1700s.
#3
Mouse,it will still be W's fault. And they are actually fighting "climate change", so no matter which way the global temperatures go, they will be right.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
04/17/2008 16:57 Comments ||
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#4
Wikipedia is good for some stuff. Not so much for politics (or anything remotely connected) as zealots can not help themselves.
Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal I think he's a little optimistic, but . . .
For those of us who monitor the political currents to discern direction in the nation's life, this was one of the biggest weeks in the campaign.
Remember the culture wars? This week the Democrats sued for peace.
On Friday evening, email queues lit up everywhere with people reacting to Barack Obama's thoughts on life being nasty, bitter and short in small-town America. Time was not long ago that a Democratic candidate could have said such folk cling to guns and religion and are hostile to "diversity" with nary a peep from his party. Not now. Obama was repudiated. Crushed. Media analysis suggested the damage could last til November.
Before midnight, Hillary was paddling down Whiskey River with the boys at Bronko's. Then on Sunday evening, the white flag really went up over the culture war's battlefield.
Hillary and Obama were both at an event in Grantham, Pa., in Cumberland County. That's south of Mechanicsburg and east of Boiling Springs. John Kerry took Pennsylvania by 2.5% in 2004, but Cumberland gave George Bush 64% of its vote. Hillary and Obama were appearing on a CNN event called the "Compassion Forum." They were at a place called Messiah College. Connect the dots.
Campbell Brown to Sen. Clinton: "And you have actually felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Share some of those occasions."
Set aside the controversies over the name-brand religious-right leaders. Whatever one calls these people Reagan Democrats, the religious right, values voters their main beef was not with the election returns but with the manifest evidence that the big-city elites thought their beliefs and their lives were stupid. That is what died this week.
Hillary Clinton: "I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the Holy Spirit was there with me as I made a journey . . . You know, it could be walking in the woods. It could be watching a sunset." . . .
Set aside the controversies over the name-brand religious-right leaders. Whatever one calls these people Reagan Democrats, the religious right, values voters their main beef was not with the election returns but with the manifest evidence that the big-city elites thought their beliefs and their lives were stupid. That is what died this week.
Whatever he meant to say, Barack Obama's small-town "cling to" statement was the Final Condescension. Hillary's trip from Bronko's bar to Messiah College ratified drinkin' on Saturday night and prayin' on Sunday morning.
Certainly, both as president would stock the judiciary from the liberal flock. Conservatives should still pocket the fact that the awful culture war has been replaced by a legitimate political competition whose locus has moved rightward. What's left of the rancid war are guerrillas in the Hollywood foothills, pot-shotting at Pat Robertson and other bogeymen. But at the big-league level of presidential politics, it's over. Say good-bye to the Michael Moore Mockathon. Say hello to the spirit in the sky.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/17/2008 07:32 ||
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#1
The longer McCain keeps his mouth shut, the better he does.
#4
I had it rattling around in my head that bo was counting on trashing whites in order to get black/hispanic votes, counting on whites to not make a peep as they have not done during my lifetime whenever they get characterized - or even better vote for him because he was trashing him.
I thought it was outrageous when hillarity starting speaking in tongues accents; I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, swksvolFF, if you went to Scotland and starting talking like an extra in Braveheart you'd probably get your ass kicked."
I saw some of that debate - someone told them both to play nice but, again, it is that same fakeness and foux sincerety which got them into this position in the first place, adding to their phoniness. So in that sense I disagree with the article - they both have f'd it up so back for (in card order) minority candidtates, women candidates, and democrats in general that if neither one is nominated president the d's lose big time; so a political hudna is in order. Sue for peace hardly but a good turn of events for anyone who is tired of stereotyping and prejudice.
Both of their campaigns have had all the style and grace of farsighted drunkards playing Operation - they have both lost, now they have to decide who lost least so as to take on mccain.
#8
Ok, if they've sued for peace, I want to see some of the major culprits tried, then executed, for war crimes. Let's see headlines like, Paying for Their Crimes: Dem Criminals in Dock at Nuremburg II.
For the damage they've done to this country deliberately they deserve some SERIOUS payback.
Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 ||
04/17/2008 18:06 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
